๐ Originally started as a misogynistic slur hurled by Japanese men at Japanese girls and women in fandom
๐ Is a pun or portmanteau that literally means โrotten womanโ
๐ Colloquially means โunmarriageableโ, โnot good wife materialโ
๐ Basically means someone who is more interested in fandom husbandos than getting married and raising a family
๐ Is a widely reclaimed and self-applied label in Japan by Japanese women, and by other women in fandom throughout the world.
๐ Is still a slur if you use it against someone as an insult, including if that person is not Japanese.
๐ Funny enough if you call a western fan a โfujoshiโ or a “fujo” as an insult you are using it in the same way as a conservative Japanese man who thinks women need to get offline and into the kitchen.
Hope that helps!
A few additions:
๐ Fujoshi was originally coined in the early 2000’s on 2channel, a Japanese textboard website very similar to 4chan.
๐ Fujoshi is spelt as “่ ๅฅณๅญ” using Japanese characters. It’s a homophonous pun based on “ๅฉฆๅฅณๅญ”, where the character “ๅฉฆ”, meaning “married woman”, is replaced with “่ ” meaning “rotten” or “fermented”.
๐ It was implied that these girls were “selfish” or “spoilt” because they didn’t want to meet society’s expectations and be a submissive housewife that would obey her husband’s orders.
๐ The anti-fujoshi community was popularized in Western fandom because of TERFs, following the idea that a person who discovered they’re a trans man because of BL is “not a real man” or “fetishizing gay men” or “wants an excuse to read their hawt yaois without any backlash”.
๐ Fujin (่ ไบบ) is the gender-neutral term for BL fans, and doesn’t have to be limited to those that are only nonbinary.
๐ You do not add an ’s’ at the end of fujoshi, even when you may be referring to multiple of them.
@homohamsteri There isn’t a word for that because almost 0 people actually do that.
If you think “people you don’t know for sure are queer men” appreciating and creating literature and artwork about queer men is somehow a problem then I don’t know what to tell you other than you need to re-examine why you think bigotry and exclusion are somehow progressive.
(note, this comes of as hostile. This hostility may not be directed at you specifically. This hostility is directed at people who think that demanding to see your “gay man card” before allowing you to participate in literature and artwork about gay men makes society better and more accepting of queer people.)
The term has been used in Japan for 20 years now by fans as a positive fandom term to the extent that anime, manga, etc is actively titled in tribute to, and marketed toward, both fujoshi and fudanshi.
Arguing that fujoshi and fudanshi can’t be reclaimed would be pretty ridiculous in the face of actual Japanese self described fujoshi and fudanshi walking around holding stacks of manga marketed toward them with titles like “My Fujoshi Life”, etc.
That said, like all slurs, it’s in the usage. If somebody calls me a “nasty fujoshi” they are calling me a slur just as sure as if they called me a “degenerate queer” and I will act accordingly.
according to Japanese wikipedia (machine translated)
Fudanshi , all- name fudanshi (Japanese: fudanshi / Fudanshi Fudanshi ) , yasaku fudanshi ( fudanshi / fukei Fukฤ ), fujoshi ’s lyricism, Sokushi-kiri BL , Bara , Yaoi ’s works men [1] . “Rotten brother” is a model of “parents” [1] , appeared in 2002, first seen on PINK channel ( Japanese : PINK channel ) 801 board [2] .ย
So from this, we can glean that the term “fudanshi” first gained usage around 2002, on Japanese imageboards. Specifically PINK channel which was an adults only imageboard.
